[94.14] Galaxy Structure and Formation with Integral Field Spectrographs

J. Gerssen, R. Bower, J. Allington-Smith (University of Durham)

Integral Field Spectrographs are a new class of powerful
astronomical instruments capable of operating on
unprecedented volumes of high-redshift space as well as
showing a fantastic amount of detail in the nearby Universe.
These instruments are therefore ideally suited to
observationally advance our understanding of the formation
and structure of galaxies, specifically:

Gas falling into a proto-galaxy leaves a visible signature
in the form of a faint halo of Ly\alpha emission around
the system. IFS observations simultaneously map the spatial
distribution of this faint emission and measure its velocity
structure. These are the key observables with which to
constrain dark matter halos in the context of the standard
model. These observations probe large volumes of space and
are also expected to yield many serendipitous discoveries of
Ly\alpha galaxies. The distribution of these systems is
another key prediction of galaxy formation scenarios.

The increasing sophistication of cosmological simulations is
beginning to address the internal properties of galaxies,
and not just their global characteristics. As the closest
analogues to disk-like proto-galaxies, the internal
properties of nearby disk galaxies provide one of the most
stringent test of cosmological simulations. A comprehensive
IFS survey of the nearby galaxies is therefore required as
it will simultaneously map the kinematics and dynamics, and
chemical composition and ages of disk galaxies.